Is President Grant underrated? Historian Sean Wilentz argues that the push to put Reagan on the $50 bill and remove Grant is misguided in underrating our nation's 18th President.

As president, Grant was determined to achieve national reconciliation, but on the terms of the victorious North, not the defeated Confederates. He fought hard and successfully for ratification of the 15th Amendment, banning disenfranchisement on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude. When recalcitrant Southern whites fought back under the white hoods and robes of the Ku Klux Klan, murdering and terrorizing blacks and their political supporters, Grant secured legislation that empowered him to unleash federal force. By 1872, the Klan was effectively dead.

For Grant, Reconstruction always remained of paramount importance, and he remained steadfast, even when members of his own party turned their backs on the former slaves. After white supremacists slaughtered blacks and Republicans in Louisiana in 1873 and attempted a coup the following year, Grant took swift and forceful action to restore order and legitimate government. With the political tide running heavily against him, Grant still managed to see through to enactment the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which prohibited discrimination according to race in all public accommodations.

Grant did not confine his reformism to expanding and protecting the rights of the freed slaves. Disgusted at the inhumanity of the nation’s Indian policies, he called for “the proper treatment of the original occupants of this land,” and directed efforts to provide federal aid for food, clothing and schooling for the Indians as well as protection from violence. He also took strong and principled stands in favor of education reform and the separation of church and state.

So has history been too unkind to Grant?

Will Wilkinson points out a recent studying the relationship between political ideology and his five foundations theory of moral sensibility and judgment. These 5 foundations are:

1) Harm/care, 2) Fairness/reciprocity, 3) Ingroup/loyalty, 4) Authority/respect,5) Purity/sanctity more elaboration here.

Apparently, the survey was more intended to primarily focus on liberal-conservative differences, but a large number of self-identified libertarians(1/8 of the sample population) took the survey, which allowed the authors to draw conclusions about libertarians as well as conservatives and liberals.

"Liberals care most about the Harm/care and Fairness/reciprocity foundations"

"Conservative concern was spread more evenly over the five foundations, and they were less willing than liberals to violate Ingroup, Authority, and Purity for money."

Libertarians, on the other hand, had the lowest sacredness scores on all five foundations. Jonathan Haidt, the author, concluded: "Free-market libertarians appear to be the least outraged and most open to contractualizing moral violations. The differences were particularly stark between libertarians and conservatives on the three binding foundations. Libertarians may support the Republican Party for economic reasons, but in their moral foundations profile we found they more closely resemble liberals than conservatives."

This led Wilkinson to write: "Libertarians are liberals who love markets."

From a political philosophical position, libertarianism, at least historically, is a radical branch of liberalism that replaces the so-called social contract with a market contract(s).

Haidt responded in the comments that the Editors of his original paper cut at quite a bit of his libertarian comparison study observations, so he is working a new paper comparing libertarians to liberals and conservatives on a number of scales. He gives a succinct summary of what he is finding:

Libertarians are liberals who lack bleeding hearts. Libertarians look much more like liberals than like conservatives on most measures, EXCEPT those that have anything to do with compassion, on which libertarians are lower than liberals AND conservatives. The lower levels of compassion, and higher levels of need for cognition and tendency to "systemize" rather than empathize, are probably related to the love of markets.

I'm not sure about the lack of empathy part, at least from my experience, but lack of "sacredness" is pretty spot on. Just because I don't not respond with "there outta be a law" to every social event I may not agree with doesn't mean I lack empathy; the ability to apply a systematic mode of thought to foresee the unintended consequences, and thus conclude why there often "shouldn't be a law" is not an absence of compassion, at least in my book. And from Herbert Gintis' research, for example, we can observe the key role markets play in facilitating empathy among members of heterogeneous groups.

But from Haidt's research, perhaps we can dispense with the nonsense of the oft quoted refrain that "libertarians are conservatives who like to smoke pot." A more accurate quip would be that "libertarians are liberals mugged by economic and political reality."

Some recent developments on the National Security State front:

1) Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010

This bill transcends the proto-fascism of the Patriot Act and ventures into outright fascism. One of the reasons I am a radical is precisely because people like Joe Lieberman and John McCain are thought to be centrists/moderates and not the putrid extremists that they actually are. In the Alice-in-Wonderland newspeak world we now find ourselves in, Extremism=Centrism, where Centrism is simply the consensus of elite opinion. At this point, I would say this Bill does not reflect such opinion, but then again, it was proposed in response to a lone "lap bomber" on an international flight. In an event of another significant internal terrorist attack, the consensus would probably shift to reflect the bill. Of course, it always helps if the perpetrators are brown people and muslim.

2) Rockefeller-Snowe Cyber Security Bill

Wired makes the point that the Cyberwar Hype is mere corporatism under the guise of "National Security," the intent being to destroy the Open Internet. Wired is not far off. IPv4 grew out of a largely open, cooperative evolutionary(contrary to uninformed opinion, the US Government did not "invent" the internet) process; IPv6, the eventual 128 bit address Network Layer protocol replacement for the current 32-bit IPv4(especially in terms of the enhanced security protocols), is going to be, and has been, much more influenced by the political process. So the Rockefeller-Snowe Cyber Security Bill would go far in largely supplanting "Request for Comments" with political lobbying in terms of adoption/modification of internet protocols. Frankly, the primary result of this bill, in my opinion, will be to make the NSA an enforcement arm for digital copyright. I mean, if you want to talk about "unauthorized network traffic," piracy and copyrighted content is by far at the top of the list.

3) Schumer-Graham Immigration Reform Bill

It's getting to the point anytime "Reform" is in a piece of legislative, you can probably just go and ahead and substitute "tyranny" and get a better idea of what said legislation entails. Real ID has stalled, so let's find another way to use fear to get a national biometric identification card, this time tying it into getting permission to earn a living. Once again people like Schumer and Graham are held up to be "moderates." Well, Schumer is a crook and Graham is just to the left of Hermann Goering, so i could stand do without this type of bi-partisanship. Quoting Schumer:

"It's the nub of solving the immigration dilemma politically speaking," Mr. Schumer said in an interview. The card, he said, would directly answer concerns that after legislation is signed, another wave of illegal immigrants would arrive.

Well, with the political economy that is emerging out of Washington, I don't think you are going to have to worry about any new "waves" of "illegal immigration," Senator.

4) PreCog Crime Prevention

Minority Report was a lousy movie; real life is just sparing us the delusion of any entertainment value...

Herbert Hoover was an awful president. He caused economic disaster. Everyone agrees on that. Beyond that, many seem to argue he caused disaster by what he didn't do. In other words, he was a free marketeer who wanted to just let everything run its course, and that's how we got economic disaster. In reality, he was largely an interventionist, and the problem was caused by much of what he did.

John Nance Garner, FDR's running mate, said Hoover was,

leading the country down the path of socialism

and FDR accused Hoover of

"reckless and extravagant" spending and for thinking "that we ought to center control of everything in Washington as rapidly as possible,"

Source: FDR's Disputed Legacy, P. 4

FDR and Garner were largely correct, for the following reasons:

1. Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act: Passed in 1930, it raised tariffs a fixed number on certain items, not by a %, but by a $ amount. The argument was tariffs would force people to buy more things made domestically, and solve the unemployment problem. The problem is, trade is a two-way street, by definition. When we enact tariffs, consumers lose (higher prices, and less money to spend on other things), the company the consumer would have bought from with that extra money loses, the workers of that company therefore lose, the foreign exporters lose from less business (obviously), and the American exporters whom the foreign exporters (or people in that country) would have bought from lose. Exports and imports are directly related; if one goes up, the other goes up, and the other way around. Just as we stopped buying their products, they stopped buying ours, which not only exacerbated unemployment, but continued directing our capital and labor to uses less efficient than if we had open trade. That alone makes Hoover an interventionist, but he did more

2. Subsidy programs. In just a year, he increased federal government spending as a % of GNP by a whopping 5.1% (and ran a $2.2 billion deficit. $31.36 billion in today's dollars). The Agricultural Marketing Act established subsidies to stabilize crop prices, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation gave billions more in subsidies. When these subsidy programs were not working, he doubled, redoubled, and expanded them; see Emergency Relief and Construction Act

Subsidies, by their very nature, take money from what people value more and put it toward what people value less (excluding positive externality subsidies). When people do not buy from somewhere, they are sending a message: you're wasting resources. Sell us what we want, or get out and someone else will. To subsidize the company wasting resources is to prevent capital and labor from going to more efficient uses.

Rex Tugwell, one of the New Deal's architects said practically the whole New Deal was

extrapolated from programs that Hoover started

Other source for 2: A History of the American People (pages 740-1)

3. Revenue Act of 1932: A huge tax increase, increased the top bracket from 25% to 63%. The estate tax was doubled. A 13.75 tax was put on corporations' net income.

Much is talked about taxes reducing productivity, and in counter, much is said about no one refusing extra money because of the tax bracket they will enter. They are both true. If, saying the top rate was 65% for simplicity, I was given a $1,000 raise when in the top bracket, I'd accept it, because I'd still have $350 more. That only applies to situations when the money is guaranteed. An example that applies less: would I be willing to work longer to get $1,000 more but only keep $350 of it. Is the extra sweat that produces $1,000 more worth it if I only get $350? That is hard to decide

Then the next degree, we have the question of risk. If I wanted to start up a new company, or invest in a company and help create jobs in it, would I be willing to risk my time, money, and energy, if I have to bear 100% of the losses, but only get 35% of the return? In those cases, the money is uncertain, and I likely would not make that investment when I would have if I got to keep more of the return. When reducing returns without reducing risk, we end up with less investment.

Hoover was not a free marketeer. He was an interventionist, he caused the economic disaster with much of what he DID.

During the Bush Years, one wing of the Democratic Party received heavy criticism from the progressive netroots for bowing into Republican pressure on foreign affairs and civil liberties. The Blue Dogs, later nicknamed the Bush Dogs by progressives, tend to be conservative Democrats representing rural Western and Southern districts, with some exceptions like Congresswoman Bean of Illinois. Although they technically unite around fiscal responsibility, they was a high amount of correlation in the eyes of progressives between the Blue Dogs and support for the most egregious of Bush's policies. Today, National Journal notes that Blue Dogs just come from a different type of district than the rest of their caucus.

Nearly half of the fiscally conservative "Blue Dog" Democrats, for instance, represent districts from the low-minority, low-education sector, with another quarter of them representing districts from the high-minority, low-education group. And 30 of the 48 House Democrats in districts that Republican presidential nominee John McCain carried in 2008 hail from the low-minority, low-education quadrant. The most-vulnerable Democrats represent these low-low districts.

In the past, I've always kept myself open to finding libertarian-leaning Democrats among the Blue Dogs and the like. It's certainly possible to imagine a more fiscally conservative Southern or Western Democrats with strong pro-2nd Amendment tendencies also taking a more anti-government perspective on civil liberties. But the reality is far different. Of the entire Blue Dog caucus, only three members, Congresswoman Harman of California, Congressman Thompson of California and Congressman Michaud of Maine, voted with us on both Afghanistan and the Patriot Act.

That's not to say that other members from so-called "low-low" districts didn't vote with us. In fact, fourteen members (Including Michaud) from low-minority, low-education districts voted with us. But they don't come from the Blue Dog wing of the party. There are 66 Democrats from these districts, so 14 members is just over 20%. But when you consider that around 27 members from these districts are Blue Dogs, the math is that around a third of non-Blue Dog Democratic members from these types of districts vote our way. That's a pretty impressive. For comparison, only 10 members of the 62 from districts with high-minority, low-education voted our way, or 16%. If you take out the Blue Dogs, it's 10 of about 48, or 20%. In the high-high quadrant, Democrats hold 84 seats and 30 of them voted with us, about 35%. And among the high education, low minority, around 17% voted with us, 13 out of 35.

It probably doesn't come as a surprise, but only one Democrat from a district that voted for McCain joined us, Congressman Perriello of Virginia. For most Democratic members, the knowledge that their district supported McCain seems to be a strong reason for them to give some support for these flawed policies. But on the other side of the aisle, no Republicans from Obama districts joined with us.

Among the four quadrants, support for our positions is rather similar in three of the four and highest in the high-high category. The percentages get better when you exclude Blue Dogs. I've focused on them first, but I hope to look at the other groups in the Democratic Caucus in future posts.

I wanted to run the numbers more on the members of the Democratic Caucus that voted for an exit strategy in Afghanistan and against the renewal of the Patriot Act. I've picked these two votes because they are iconic of the major issues that led to the creation of Freedom Democrats during the Bush Administration. My argument is still that Republicans as a whole do not have serious plans to promote small government policies on the economic side and Democratic opposition to militarism abroad and a surveillance state at home is not entirely gone. Because of that, Freedom Democrats continues to have a purpose.

A total of 68 Democrats and only 4 Republicans aligned with our interests on these two votes. While the Afghanistan vote received more support, 59 members (3 GOP, 56 Democrats) voted for it but in favor of the Patriot Act renewal, there were 16 members (6 GOP, 10 Democrats) who opposed the Patriot Act renewal but did not support an Afghanistan exit strategy. This includes Congressman Chaffetz of Utah who has now come out supporting an Afghanistan exit strategy. I can give him the benefit of the doubt but I don't know about anyone else.

There are 55 other members who didn't cast a vote on each issue: 6 Delegates who can vote on amendments but not bills, 4 Members who have resigned or passed away, 3 new Members, and 42 other Members who just didn't vote on one of the issues. About twenty on each vote, which makes it seem like there's just always a number of Members who can't manage to vote because something else is up. 8 Members opposed the renewal of the Patriot Act but didn't vote on Afghanistan and 4 are cosponsors of McGovern's bill that would, in effect, do the same as his Amendment: Capuano, Hastings (FL), Lewis (GA), and Velázquez. For the members who didn't vote on the Patriot Act renewal but did support an Afghanistan exit strategy, 1 voted against similar provisions during 2008: Capps.

So our "honorable mentions" are Chaffetz, Capps, Capuano, Hastings (FL), Lewis (GA), and Velázquez.

And, as I said previously, here is the list of the 68 Democrats who voted with us both times:

Abercrombie
Baldwin
Blumenauer
Braley (IA)
Clarke
Cohen
Costello
DeFazio
Doggett
Edwards (MD)
Ellison
Farr
Filner
Frank (MA)
Fudge
Grijalva
Hare
Harman
Hinchey
Hirono
Holt
Honda
Johnson (GA)
Kagen
Kucinich
Larson (CT)
Lee (CA)
Loebsack
Luján
Maffei
Maloney
Markey (MA)
Matsui
McCollum
McDermott
McGovern
Michaud
Miller, George
Moore (WI)
Nadler (NY)
Neal (MA)
Oberstar
Olver
Pallone
Pastor (AZ)
Payne
Perriello
Pingree (ME)
Polis (CO)
Price (NC)
Richardson
Ryan (OH)
Sánchez, Linda T.
Sarbanes
Schakowsky
Scott (VA)
Serrano
Shea-Porter
Speier
Thompson (CA)
Tierney
Towns
Visclosky
Waters
Watt
Waxman
Welch
Woolsey

More on this list to come.

Marc Ambinder makes some interesting observations about Congressman Paul Ryan and his plan to bring down the growth in government spending.

Paul Ryan is the Republican idea man of the hour. Karl Rove endorsed Ryan's approach to budget reform on Glenn Beck, and whenever Republicans are asked about their preferred alternatives to the administration's deficit reduction intentions, Ryan's name and proposals are offered up. Hey, Republicans have ideas too. We don't need health care reform to reduce the deficit -- at least not yet.

So prominent Republicans -- particularly those running for president and those who aren't elected officials -- love Paul Ryan when it's convenient. Why is it, then, that only twelve members of the conference were willing to attach their names to his bill -- and none from the leadership? One reason is that Ryan is introducing it in his capacity as a member -- not as the ranking member of the budget committee. (Ryan's official budget proposal has been supported by the entire caucus -- but that isn't this.)

One theory: Republicans are worried about the political salability of Ryan's specific proposals, which are, in sum, the apeothesis of orthodox party economic policy -- policy that has been politically, if not substantively, discredited. (Ryan's response to some specific criticisms can be found here.)

Paul Ryan may be the only Republican serious about reforming the budget. The rest of the caucus likes the idea of having a plan, but they know that Ryan's plan is radioactive politically. The Republicans claim to be small government conservatives because they oppose Democratic proposals, but as a caucus they don't have any proposals of their own to slow or even cut the increases in government spending over the long term.

It looks like ole JD wants to turn the Tea Parties into a prayer breakfast... Listen

Then again, this is my idea of good church music...

For most of the first decade of the twenty-first century, the two parties were split on some very fundamental issues: foreign policy and civil liberties. Neoconservatives under Bush were pushing a new foreign policy to remake the Middle East while concentrating power in an unchecked executive branch to spy on American citizens. Democrats opposed most of these power grabs, although enough weak centrists and moderates in the party gave into Bush's power grab to give the more liberal netroots activists a reason to feel like their party was out of touch and in the hands of the elite. The rest is, now, history . .

Today, under a Democratic Administration, the same temptation of power is there seducing a new party in power. As noted yesterday, an effort to pull out of Afghanistan got minor support in the House. A measure to extend provisions in the Patriot Act passed with broad bipartisan support. Is all doomed for the libertarian Democrat now that Democrats are in power? Was the "ooze" decade of Democratic opposition to the war on civil liberties and the neoconservative aggression in the Middle East only temporary?

My answer is no.

First, the Republicans have not suddenly switched positions. On the Patriot Act vote 10 Republicans opposed the renewal but 87 Democrats. An immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan got lackluster support, but at least requiring an exit strategy received the majority support of the Democratic caucus last year with 131 Democrats, but only 7 Republicans.

For want of a better analogy, it's similar to the 1920s. Republicans were rather united in their support of Prohibition, while the issue split Democrats internally. Despite a significant dry influence in the Democratic Party, a wet was better off having some affiliate with the Democrats. An activist motivated by these fundamental issues of war and peace, and civil liberties, probably will find more allies among Democrats than Republicans.

The Republicans, not so surprisingly are the usual suspects. The Afghanistan vote received the support of only Coble, Duncan, Johnson (IL), Jones, Paul, Rohrbacher, and Whitfield. And the Republicans opposing the Patriot Act renewal were Bartlett, Bishop (UT), Chaffetz, Duncan, Ehlers, Heller, Johnson (IL), Jones, Paul and Young (AK). Giving Chaffetz the benefit of the doubt since he's since come out in favor of an exit strategy of Afghanistan, the Republicans aligned together on both votes are a small handful of only five: Chaffetz, Duncan, Johnson (IL), Jones and Paul.

Paul Ryan, budget guru and conservative up and comer, isn't on the list. Neither is woe of earmarks and pork Jeff Flake. And, of course, no one in leadership.

With 131 Democrats calling for an Afghanistan exit strategy and 87 opposing the Patriot Act renewal, the overlap was a decent 68 Democrats, excluding a handful of members who have left since the Afghanistan vote, have entered before the Patriot Act renewal, or missed one of the votes. Here is the list, for what it's worth:

Abercrombie
Baldwin
Blumenauer
Braley (IA)
Clarke
Cohen
Costello
DeFazio
Doggett
Edwards (MD)
Ellison
Farr
Filner
Frank (MA)
Fudge
Grijalva
Hare
Harman
Hinchey
Hirono
Holt
Honda
Johnson (GA)
Kagen
Kucinich
Larson (CT)
Lee (CA)
Loebsack
Luján
Maffei
Maloney
Markey (MA)
Matsui
McCollum
McDermott
McGovern
Michaud
Miller, George
Moore (WI)
Nadler (NY)
Neal (MA)
Oberstar
Olver
Pallone
Pastor (AZ)
Payne
Perriello
Pingree (ME)
Polis (CO)
Price (NC)
Richardson
Ryan (OH)
Sánchez, Linda T.
Sarbanes
Schakowsky
Scott (VA)
Serrano
Shea-Porter
Speier
Thompson (CA)
Tierney
Towns
Visclosky
Waters
Watt
Waxman
Welch
Woolsey

If I had to guess just based on the names, this looks like the left wing of the party but with a number of more centrist members too. It may not be the majority of the caucus, but around a quarter of the membership it seems a lot more to work with than on the Republican side.

The New Yorker's George Packer has an interesting blog post about Progressives and Populists, comparing President Obama (the Progressive) to Democratic Congressman Tom Perriello (the Populist).

In political terminology that goes back more than a century, Obama is a Progressive, and Perriello is a Populist. Progressives came from the successful ranks of American society, they identified with the interests and aspirations of the educated and well-off, but their sense of civic responsibility was scandalized by the corruption of political machines and the evils of corporate capitalism. They were driven by moral conscience and pragmatic concern to crusade for a range of reforms, from the primary election to the income tax. Their impulse, individual and ethical in nature, was to cleanse and restore. Their model was the disinterested, public-spirited citizen who brought expert knowledge to solving social problems.

. . . A hundred years later, the scale of powerful institutions is taken as more or less a given by contemporary Progressives like Obama, who appointed an architect of the bank bailout as his treasury secretary. Their quarrel isn’t with bigness itself, but with the unfair advantages that political influence has conferred on corporations, insurance and drug companies, and banks against the consumer, the taxpayer, and the small businessman.

This is where distance between Obama and Tom Perriello begins to open. For Perriello is less a Progressive than a Populist. The Populists were agrarians, and when Perriello told an audience at a grant-giving ceremony in Martinsville, Virginia, that farm jobs could be the jobs of the future, he was sounding a very old chord in American discourse. In his language and sympathies, his frequent use of the word “elite,” his vilification of Wall Street bankers, Perriello is carrying the banner of the laid-off seamstress, the struggling truck-stop owner, the hard-pressed tobacco farmer. These were the constituents of the original Populists. They looked with anger upward rather than with sympathy downward. They didn’t come from the professional middle class, though some of their champions did, and they didn’t put their faith in the training and education of experts. If anything, expertise was suspect as a cover for the interests of the powerful. Hofstadter described the “dominant themes in Populist ideology” as “the idea of a golden age…the dualistic version of social struggles; the conspiracy theory of history; and the doctrine of the primacy of money."

It's interesting to consider that while Parker looks at the Populist vs. Progressive divide, the Progressives were themselves split both by geography and by partisanship. Some Northeaster Progressives first flirted with the Democratic Party while incarnated as "Mugwumps" focused on civil service reform and later joined with the Democratic Party under President Woodrow Wilson. But even within the Republican Party, progressives had two geographic wings. Nicol C. Rae explains in "The Decline and Fall of the Liberal Republicans" the divide:

If a fundamental conservatism inspired the more patrician progressives of the East, this was certainly not shared by their western brethren. Western progressivism, embodied in the figures of Robert LaFollette in Wisconsin, George Norris in Nebraska, and Hiram Johnson in California, was a genuinely radical movement, reflecting its populist antecedents and the continuing economic plight of the western and farm states. While the eastern reformers sought to alleviate the social conditions of the poor, and mitigate the excesses of big business and the machines, the westerners launched an assault on the entire political structure in their states and on the vested interests--notably the railroad companies--that had previously controlled that party structure. In pursuit of the extirpation of business influences from politics, the western progressives instituted the direct primary for all public offices, abolished all forms of political patronage, introduced nonpartisan elections and the city-manager system at the local level, and established the initiative, referendum, and recall procedures. In the western and plains states, with their large numbers of discontented small farmers and small businessmen, this assault on corporate control of the political process aroused enthusiastic electoral support. While the western radical and the urban progressives of the East had a common desire to improve living conditions and curb the excesses of big business and the political machines, the eastern progressives were highly suspicious of agrarianism and the fervor of the radicals' attack on the eastern corporate and intellectual elite.

Western Progressivism within the Republican Party tended to merge with some of the Populist sympathies the region had developed, but tempered by a Republican partisanship that distrusted a Democratic Party that represented "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion." It's probably not a coincidence that the great Democratic Populist William Jennings Bryan had strong appeal in the West; he was a moral crusader who supported Prohibition, was an evangelical Christian, and was not from the South. And it's not a coincidence that years later many of these Western Progressives ended up supporting FDR. Northeastern Progressive Woodrow Wilson had a window of opportunity in courting these Progressives, but this failed for a variety of reasons (mostly the fault of Wilson).

While FDR came, geographically, from the Northeast he shared a lot in common with the Populist sympathies of the Democratic Party in its bases of the South and West. Parker is absolutely right when he says, "They looked with anger upward rather than with sympathy downward." This anger wasn't just upward, but Northward and Eastward. The economy of the post-Civil War Era favored not a random dispersal of bigness, but a geographic concentration of big business in the Northeast. Populists in the South and West were angry at a regional elite in the Northeast. While aspects of the New Deal have been interpreted as class-based conflict between the have's and the have-not's, there was a regional component between the have region, the Northeast, and the have-not regions, the South and the West.

Today's politics creates a confusion not found in the older political eras. The Republicans today are the party of the have's, but their base of support is in the have-not regions. The Democrats are the opposite, they are the party of the have-not's but are strongest in the wealthiest regions. It adds an unusual twist to politics today as the Democratic advantage in the wealthiest regions comes from the middle to upper class activists that are most similar to the Northeast Progressives of the bygone era. But instead of the party of William Jennings Bryan having a few Northeast Progressives grafted on, it's the party of Northeast Progressives with only a few William Jennings Bryan's.